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“Times have changed” said Codelco after have desisted of the project that pretended the construction of the Thermoelectric plant called as “Energía Minera” (CTEM) which was even approved by the environmental authority. On the letter dated as October 7th of 2015 and directed to The Commission of Environment Evaluation, Codelco explained the decision to “renounce to all the rights and obligations of what the Resolution n° 267 of 2009 confers”. The project was driven by the division of Codelco Energía Minera S.A, with an investment of more than US$1700 million.

The Chilean government will likely introduce a new bill next year in another attempt to repeal the so-called copper law, defense minister José Antonio Gómez said. Under the controversial legislation, state copper giant Codelco must allocate 10% of its sales revenue to the nation's defense budget. The law has been on the books since 1958, but it was strengthened during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet from 1973-90. In an interview with local daily El Mercurio over the Christmas weekend, Gómez said that his ministry was working with the finance ministry on a bill to secure the long-term financing of the armed forces that will be presented in congress next year. The new push to revoke the law comes after revelations made by local weekly The Clinic over the so-called milicogate in which a number of army personnel allegedly used fake invoices to defraud the state to the tune of some 2bn pesos (around US$2.9mn) between 2010 and 2014 by using the copper law. For years, the copper law has been the subject of criticism on account of its lack of transparency, as the armed forced are not obliged to report on how they spend the money, as well as its impact on Codelco's financial results. Attempts to revoke the law, which started immediately after the country reinstated a democratic government in 1990, have so far been unsuccessful because of a lack of political consensus. The last attempt was in 2012 but it went nowhere. In 2014, Codelco contributed US$1.08bn to the armed forces' budget under the copper law, compared with US$1.16bn in 2013. Between January and September of this year, Codelco gave US$639mn under the copper law, down from US$768mn in the year-ago period.